Monday, March 26, 2012

Tommy Shots taught me how to kill, a former Colombo capo squealed Monday.
The government's chief witness against Colombo crime boss Thomas "Tommy Shots" Gioeli took the stand in Brooklyn against his mob mentor, describing their greatest hits together.
Sicilian-born former capo Dino "Big Dino" Calabro has pleaded guilty to eight gangland killings - six with Gioeli.
By the time Calabro met Gioeli at a Getty gas station in Brooklyn in 1989, he had already chosen the glitz of a gangster's life over his father's blue-collar labor.
"I wanted what (Gioeli) had," Calabro, 45, told Assistant U.S. Attorney James Gatta.
"He had the power to get me in the family."
Prosecutors contend Gioeli advanced his mob career supervising a lethal crew of killers that included Calabro and co-defendant Dino "Little Dino" Saracino.
Saracino, who is Calabro's cousin, shook his head when the mob rat entered the courtroom.
Recounting his first murder — of Bonanno associate Frank "Chestnut" Marasa in 1991 — Calabro said Gioeli gave him explicit advice.
"Tommy always said, 'Shoot him in the body first. Then walk up and cap him,'" he said.
The two men committed countless crimes together and forged family bonds beyond their blood oath. Gioeli and his wife Maureen are godparents to two of Calabro's sons.
Their families socialized, took vacations together and lived near each other in Long Island when the mobsters left Brooklyn and moved east.
"I want to thank my friend Tommy, he's done a lot for me," Calabro says in a clip from his wedding video played for the jury in Brooklyn Federal Court.